These days, it’s impossible to build a horde of troops to pillage a friend’s clan base or beat a level in Candy Crush without being asked to buy something or watch an unwanted ad.
It’s the accepted cost of playing free mobile games, but it wasn’t always that way.
New York City-based GameClub wants to resurrect that old era of premium mobile games, where gamers could slay an evil troll boss or hop over lava pits without facing ads or in-game purchases.
On Thursday, GameClub leveled up those efforts announcing it has raised $2.5 million in seed funding. The round will prepare the company for its official launch of games later in 2019.
GameClub CEO and co-founder Dan Sherman said in a statement that the company hopes to save smaller, independent game studios struggling to survive in the modern mobile gaming era.
“We’ve reached a dire point where so few developers can make premium work on mobile that the entire category is at risk,” Sherman said. “GameClub was created to solve this problem, capitalizing on our resources to bring classic and original premium games back to mobile while developing new ways for gamers to discover and enjoy them.”
Founded in 2018, GameClub deploys a team of software engineers who help small game studios update their games to make them compatible with modern smartphones. For many of these studios, it can be a challenge to update games to maintain compatibility with the constantly changing mobile software and hardware.
As a result, many of those games are disappearing from app stores.
“Without GameClub, these titles wouldn’t be accessible at all,” Sherman said. “But because we're able to bundle these games together and support them using our own tools and technology, we're in a better position to make sure they stay playable and discoverable by new players in a cost-effective way. These games aren't on their own anymore.”
It’s a challenge that two-person studios like Vlambeer, creators of Super Crate Box, have felt acutely, Vlambeer’s co-founder Rami Ismail said in a statement.
“GameClub is a perfect solution for us: they’ve committed to all future compatibility updates, and that way they can make sure our game remains available, playable and preserved for the future,” said Rami Ismail, co-founder of Vlambeer.
GameClub is working to resurrect games like Super Crate Box, Gasketball, Space Miner and Hackycat among many others. They are also working with the studios behind those games to create new titles. They plan to have a global launch in the fall. The round will help the company scale its team of six, hiring engineering, marketing, UI/UX roles and those experienced in mobile game production.
Thursday’s round included investments from CRCM, GC Traker, Watertower Ventures, Ride Ventures, BreakawayGrowth Fund and more.
